BILLY Bragg is looking forward to a new England if Scots vote for independence in the upcoming referendum.

The former soldier’s music career has been intertwined with political activism since he first enjoyed success in 1983.

“I’ve always had an activist edge to what I do,” said Bragg, who heads to Scotland today for the Belladrum music festival in Beauly, Inverness-shire.

“The Scottish independence debate is a manifestation of the failure of the Westminster system that only offers us two viable parties of government. People are getting a bit fed up with it.

“You can see with the rise of Ukip and the failure of anyone to win the last election, that the offer that we are getting is no longer attractive.

“Many of us live in constituencies that never change hands so our views are taken for granted and not expressed. I live in west Dorset, which has been Tory since 1886 and as a Labour supporter that doesn’t help me.

“But I come from a town that has been Labour since 1931 and that doesn’t help the Tory voter who lives there, so I understand his point of view as well.

“We need to change that and sadly Westminster is showing no signs of trying to address that issue.

“My hope is that a Scottish Yes vote will act as a catalyst that would force the remainder of the UK to come to a new constitutional settlement that makes all of our votes count.

“Not just the 10 per cent who live in the swing constituencies in middle England where the parties pitch all their votes.”

Bragg admits he changed his mind about Scottish independence after taking a more traditional stance against it, when referendum terms were originally being shaped.

He said: “I originally had the more traditional leftist view that it would be a betrayal of the working class if Scotland left.

“But politics has moved on a lot since then.

“I see things now less in terms of class politics and more in terms of freedom resting in the individual being able to hold those in power to account.

“If you can’t hold those in power to account, you are not really free.

“There’s a number of areas in the British constitution where those ideas of accountability need to be enhanced.

“Not least in how we hold the bankers and corporations to account and how we hold global capitalism to account.

“This isn’t the traditional leftist narrative I learned during the miners’ strike. Conversely, in our country, socialism has always been about how to hold capitalism to account.

“It is about refounding the ideas of a fair society and how we do that.

“You have the chance in Scotland to change the landscape, to bring something new into being. If you are complaining about the status quo and you have a chance to change it and you don’t change it, then you have to ask yourself, what are you really complaining about?”

Video Loading

Video Unavailable

Click to playTap to play

The video will start in 8Cancel

Play now

Bragg will discuss his politics further when he arrives at the Belladrum music festival this weekend, alongside acts such as Tom Jones, Razorlight and Frightened Rabbit.

He is performing on the Garden Stage tomorrow afternoon before taking part in a talk at the festival that night.

“It should be good fun,” he said.

“One of the reasons I chose a festival like this is that festivals tend to be in places you haven’t played for a while and I don’t think I’ve played up here since the 80s. At Belladrum, I’ll be playing solo in the afternoon, which is always a good time. Everybody is pretty chilled out.

“It’s not one of those ones when you appear and disappear before you get a chance to catch the vibe.

“I’ll be checking out some of the other acts although I haven’t worked out who is on yet. I’ll be getting a sense of the place.”

Bragg first enjoyed significant success when Kirsty MacColl covered his song A New England.

He later fronted the Red Wedge collective of musicians, who tried to engage young people in left wing politics leading up to the 1987 general election.

Before that, he was a vocal supporter of the 1984-85 miners’ strike.

But after he recently tweeted “go for it” to Scots who are thinking of voting in the September 18 referendum, he found himself criticised by old Labour pals and Tories alike for speaking out in favour of independence.

“The traditional left dabbled in a dozen types of socialism but they think there’s only one kind of patriotism or nationalism,” he said.

“So I get people who have a knee-jerk reaction to nationalism.

“I get people who mistake a referendum on independence for a referendum on the SNP. I have to argue with mostly Scottish Labour people who are very, very upset about the referendum. I also get people who think it’s only Scottish votes that have held the Conservative party at arm’s length in the last 60 years.

“England is quite capable of electing a Labour government and we shouldn’t be scared of a Tory hegemony.”

He’s also critical of the No campaign, which he sees as being steeped in hypocrisy.

“I can only respond from an English perspective. But it has been very disappointing.

“They have not recognised the urge for greater accountability at a more local level that’s behind this.

“All these unionist Tory MPs who don’t believe that Scotland should have a say over the laws that it makes are the same people who don’t believe that Brussels should have a say over the laws that Britain makes.

“They want us to leave the European Union for exactly the same reasons they’re telling Scots they should remain part of the UK.”

He added: “You would imagine that people disappointed in Westminster will take the opportunity to change it.

“It seems to me that those who want independence in Scotland are looking forward to a different future, whereas those who want to remain with the status quo are clinging to the past, to an imperial idea of the past and we need to wake up from that.

“We in England are not going to do it on our own.

“We need Scotland to kick us out of bed and we might get our act together on that.

“There’s a post-British thing going on in Scotland and we in England would like to have a bit of that pie as well.